Special Occasions are Special

Yesterday Doug and I celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary. We have always tried to set aside time to acknowledge and celebrate our anniversary in some way. It's not always extravagant, but we do prioritize making a special effort on May 28.
Yesterday was no exception. We didn't want to spend a lot of money as we've had quite the year in travel and still have the expense of fixing the boat motor ahead of us. Even so, we knew we could still take time to celebrate us.
The one thing I wanted to do was to walk down to the water and sit and have a drink seaside. The afternoon broke out in a lovely way and it was so wonderful to be outside, sitting in the sun, me enjoying a nice rosé (not my favorite wine but so beautiful to look at and at times a nice in between to white and red) while Doug imbibed on a Swedish pear cider. Tanner enjoyed being in on the action.
I did manage to write Doug a card expressing how grateful I am that he is my partner, willing to walk the journey of life with me through ups and downs, good moods and bad ones. Doug made the day very special for me. There were 16 red roses, and champagne, and a card with writing in it! We went down to a special food hall nearby and picked out some entrecoté steaks, sort of like rib-eye but not quite the same. Good steaks are hard to come by here. It's just not part of the Swedish cuisine. We got some fresh bread, fresh raspberries and strawberries, lovely baking potatoes, fresh vegetables for a salad and cracked open a beautiful bottle of red wine that our friends from France had brought when they were here last month.
We don't have a grill right now but Sweden has these little "one time grills", a brilliant invention where you have the charcoal and grill top all in a little metal container that you light and use and then dispose of. For grilling big stuff, not so great, but in a pinch, it gets the job done! I have to say, the steaks were as close to the yummy ones we eat in California all the time as we've ever had.
We had a lovely day together by simply prioritizing time together and making sure the focus was on us. And shouldn't special occasions be just that...special? It's important to remember that in order to make something special you don't have to spend a lot of money or give extravagant gifts. There are perhaps times and places for that as well. But the most important thing about a special occasion is that time is set aside to break the ordinary routine and lift up something worth celebrating.
My marriage to Doug is worth celebrating. I am so grateful that he is my husband and I look forward to the adventure that spending our life together will continue to be.